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#FitnessFriday: 20 Midnight Miles …

Egags! That was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. This was the weekend I was planning my midnight 20 mile treadmill run. Originally, I was going to do it Saturday morning beginning at 12am, but our family is heading out of town for the weekend — so I decided to move it up a day to Friday morning.

So, here I am writing about my run — pretty much half asleep. I wouldn’t be surprised if I started to hallucinate before noon. I am pretty dang tired. I guess staying up all night while running 20 miles to do that to you, eh?

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Aug 12, 2016 at 12:26am PDT

Now, you’re probably wondering what possessed me to do this? Well, first off — I blame Jill. She was the one who gave me the idea. She likes coming up with these “how can we punish ourselves?” training runs and routes. She is one the best worst influences in my life — literally in many arenas.

So, yeah, I totally blame Jill.

But, the thinking behind this run is to not just prepare me for my marathons next month, but my 50 miler as well. I wanted to do something that was physically, emotionally and mentally tough. And, running on the treadmill — for 20 miles — in the middle of the night was just insane enough to cover all three of those focused areas. Plus, it’s awesome fatigue training.

To keep myself from going completely insane — I decided to a couple of things. One, I was planning to break up the run into four 5 mile legs with about a 15 minute break in between the legs. I used that time to run to the restroom, eat some food (mainly bananas) and hydrate.

I also planned on changing my shirt and hat/bandana after each leg too — no point in staying in a soaked shirt and headband, right? Plus, wet shirts substantial raise the risk of me chaffing all over my body (not just the moobs),like manatee that got ran over by a motorboat.

And, lastly, my plan was to keep myself entertained through Netflix, the Olympics and whatever looked good on TV. I thought about putting my headphones in and jamming out to my music, but — yeah — I would have probably gone mad or the very least fallen asleep around mile 10.

I pretty much ended up watching more Olympics than anything. Netflix wasn’t really working and NBC was replaying the swimming and gymnastic events — and since I didn’t see them earlier I just ended up watching that for a couple hours.

And, oh my gosh, it was the best/worst decision I could have made. When Phelps won his 22nd gold medal I almost threw my hand into the ceiling fan in jubilation and then I pretty much lost it when Simone Manuel won her gold medal. Her reaction was just priceless — I could only imagine those emotions.

The other Simone — Simone Biles — was AMAZING in the gymnastic meet. Holy cow! I don’t understand gymnastics most of the time, but every four years I’m GLUED to it. I have never seen anyone more dominant than Simone. She deserved her gold medal. She was simply amazing.

So after all of this Olympic jubilation — NBC followed it all up with Rachel Ray. Talk about a steep drop off. I tried to get into her show, but at 3:30am — I couldn’t take her personality. I swear she gets hooked up to IVs full of coffee before each show.

So, yeah, I tried to find something else to watch. But, do you know how hard it is to find something decent to watch at 3:30-4am?I swear if I wasn’t on the treadmill running I would have bought a kitchen load of copper pans that keep cheese from sticking to the pan. I also saw a Squatty Potty commercial — those are always magical.

Anyways — the run itself wasn’t bad. Well — THAT — bad. My goal was to finish within 4-4:30 hours so with my breaks in between the legs it’d take me a good 5-5:15(ish) hours. It took me 4:20 to do the 20 so I was within my range — I did end up fartleking a lot of my last leg, because of fatigue. But, overall, I feel good about the run.

I mean — I ran 20 miles on the treadmill in the middle of the night. Who does that?

Crazy runner people who are training for a 50 mile ultra, I guess?

Luckily, this is my only long treadmill planned. My next 20 miler (in two weeks) will be running the Run Elevated Half down Little Cottonwood plus 7 miles afterwards. That’s another tough mental and physical run, because usually when I am done racing — I am done moving for the day. This will be a hard run. But, a neccessary one.

Anyways — as I mentioned above, I doing a mini staycation this weekend to relax. And, then on Monday I’m (finally) turning 35. I say finally, because I’ve been telling people I am 35 for pretty much the past six months or so. It’s kind of the curse of working with finances, because I go off the fiscal year a lot. It’s already my 2017.

So make sure to come back next Tuesday for pictures of my weekend and birthday festivities. Since I share a birthday with my sister we usually go do something fun. And, by fun I mean — wherever the nieces and nephews want to go. A few years it was the zoo, last year it was Snowbird and this year it’s Cherry Hill! It’s like 1996 all over again. I’m looking forward to it.

I will have a number of posts out next week as well dealing with my Whole30 completion (Monday is my weigh-in), my new diet plan and a 40 Before 40 Bucket List I made in honor of my birthday.

YEAH RUNNING! BOO TREADMILLS! YEAH OTHER THINGS!

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted a podcast of either AIIA or the Runcast. Life has been pretty hectic. But, AIIA is back this week — and — the Runcast will be next week. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you.

This is a great podcast this week from AIIA — it’s a Q&A panel and dives into some good stuff. No matter what your relationship is with addiction — the AIIA Podcast is a great source of inspiration for everyone! So please give it a listen …

Today is Day 28 of my third round of Whole30! Which means my weigh-in is on Monday — which is also on my birthday! I have no idea how much I’ve lost. I kinda doubt I lost the 13.3lbs. I wanted to lose to get into the 230s, but I am fine with that. I feel like I’ve plateaued a bit — which is typical.

I’ve stuck with the diet and kept myself on track there. So we will see. I love the intrigue of my weigh-in days — it’s like a page out of the book of The Biggest Loser. All I really need now is a blinky scale and flavored gum sponsor to make it legit.

I have a diet plan I am going to share a bit more in depth next week. But, basically, I’ve adapted the Whole30 diet plan into a 80/20 format. There’s a lot to it that’ll share later next. But, I am excited and ready to keep a lot of this momentum going.